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| "The Street" |
Is it Noir? Not in the conventional sense.
Its Noirsville in its subject matter. The Strip Tease Murder Case is like a noir travelogue to 52nd Street and the striptease joints that sprouted up in the old jazz clubs about ten years after New York City Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia on April 30, 1937, put all of the city's burlesque theaters out of business for corrupting the morals of the city.
LaGuardia accomplished this by denying the renewal of burlesque theater licenses. He was supported by a coalition that included "legitimate" Broadway showmen who hated the cheap competition, small business owners, convinced that burlesque houses attracted criminals, and moral reformers, who thought burlesque attracted prostitution and led to sex crimes.
52nd Street was known as "Swing Street" or just "The Street" from the 1940's to 1960's. The clubs were located between 5th and 6th Avenues in the bottom floors of 4 and 5-story walk up tenements. These buildings were roughly about 20 feet wide and 60 feet deep. They usually consisted of a bar, chairs, tables, and a small stage. 52nd Street clubs booked such jazz legends as Miles Davis, Harry Gibson, Dizzy Gillespie, Billie Holiday, Nat Jaffe, Marian McPartland, Thelonious Monk, Charlie Parker, Louis Prima, Art Tatum, Fats Waller, Trummy Young, and others. 52nd Street has been called the second most important place for the dissemination of bebop.
In the mid to the late 1940s West Coast Jazz came into prominence.
"Hollywood film studios needed skilled musicians, as did television, commercials, and all the other ancillary entertainment businesses that flourished in the L.A. area during the years following World War II. For the first time in a quarter of a century, an aspiring jazz musician had two options—East or West?—and many opted for the Pacific Coast. As I heard one musician opine: “I figured I could starve or freeze in New York, but in L.A., I’d only starve.”" (Ted Gioia - Observer)
This caused a decline in the popularity of the jazz clubs of 52nd Street and it turned into a renaissance for burlesque. Lots of jazz aficionados bemoaned the death of The Street. By 1954, Club Ha-Ha, the Moulin Rouge, the French Quarter, Club Pigalle, the Flamingo, Club Nocturne, Club del Rio, and Club Samoa had nightly "novelty strippers." The jazz was still there but it was the jazz that combos played, low down, bump and grind tunes.
In "1955 Cabaret magazine reported, "in 1953, the demise of West 52nd as a nitery center was hastened by the police. Many of the places were hauled up on the carpet for permitting women employees to mingle with the guests, for providing insufficient illumination, for fast B-girl practices, and for other infractions. Licenses were suspended for months or permanently." (JEREMIAH'S
VANISHING NEW YORK)
The Strip Tease Murder Case is basically a group of these real 52nd Street novelty strippers, one comic, and their lounge act routines tacked on to an inept murder script filmed for posterity circa 1950. It's purpose had to be a sort of cloaked advertisement to visit the sleazy attractions of The Street. Now the film serves as a 52nd Street historical archive. Its all gone save for 21 Club. July 4, 1960 was the end. That's the date the State Liquor Authority pulled the licenses on seven clubs in one day.
Noirsville
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| Johnny (Dennis Patrick) rt. |
Think of The Strip Tease Murder Case as a blueprint for Striporama (1953) directed by Jerald Intrator another film with a primitive script, and Varietease (1954) and Teaserama (1955) both directed by Irving Klaw, only the last two dispensed with any pretext of having any type of plot and presented more as stripper documentaries.
Directed and written by Hugh Prince, cinematography was by Brian Calhoun, music by Hugh Prince. Besides strippers Eunice Jason, Denise Darnell, Naomi, Alberta, and Lynn Sherwood, the only member of the cast to go on to bigger and better things was Dennis Patrick who appeared in Classic Noir Guilty Bystander (1950), and in a long career in television including Mike Hammer TV Series (1958–1959), and Dark Shadows TV Series (1966–1971) where he played Jason McGuire / Paul Stoddard.
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| Dennis Patrick |
Remember this film and what these acts should have looked like when watching all the comparatively tame and lame striptease acts in Classic Hollywood Noirs, i.e. Gilda (1946), Adele Jergens in Armored Car Robbery (1950), Gloria DeHaven in Scene Of the Crime (1949) and others, Robin Raymond in The Glass Wall (1953), Renee De Milo in Girl On The Run (1953), Mala Powers in The City That Never Sleeps (1953), Kim Novak in The Man With Golden Arm (1955), Helene Stanton in The Big Combo (1955), Barbara Nichols in Beyond A Reasonable Doubt (1956), Virginia De Lee in Hell Bound (1957) and Anita Ekberg in Screaming Mimi (1958). Watch The Strip Tease Murder Case for it's archival value 5/10.
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| "The Street" |
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